Allen's "Getting Things Done" has, since its publication, become a productivity classic and the GTD acronym has found its way into all sorts of strange corners of the world. The original book outlines the core philosophy of capturing and sorting every little to-do, task or next action to free up your mind.

Allen balances the book out nicely by first introducing the overall concept and then walking through each individual component, step by step, using stories from his consulting business. This 2002 edition also includes quaint references to Palm, which gives it a humorous old-time feeling. ( )

So many books on this topic are filled with nonsense or even common sense suggestions that just do not work. Allen, on the other hand, has some great ideas that even while just reading about them made me feel more productive.

I actually embarked on a quest to declutter and reduce the stress in my life some time ago, I've tried many different methods with varying levels of success, but recently, a friend started helping me go through everything and actually forcing me to do the work, God bless her. About the same time she was visiting, I started reading this book. To my surprise, many of Allen's first steps were already being put in practice at my friend's suggestion. I'm don't even think she knows anything about this book.

So, between my friend and David Allen, I have started to use the methods discussed in Getting Things Done and have so far found a lot of value in them. I'll see where this leads, and hopefully will become more productive and less stressed.

I was pleasantly surprised after reading Getting Things Done. Many of the Let-me-show-you-how-to-get-organized books I've read offer obvious, dated, silly suggestions i.e. store your daily work tools near you and less-used items further away. But Allen's book is very different. He doesn't propose that we get organized HIS way. What he puts forth is that we use whatever system we are most comfortable with CONSISTENTLY. Excellent book! ( )

It is simply the best personal productivity book I’ve ever read, and there’s material in this book that can apply to anyone’s life, whether you’re a manager or a writer or a professional or a stay-at-home parent.

With first-chapter allusions to martial arts, "flow," "mind like water," and other concepts borrowed from the East (and usually mangled), you'd almost think this self-helper from David Allen should have been called Zen and the Art of Schedule Maintenance.

Not quite. Yes, Getting Things Done offers a complete system for downloading all those free-floating gotta-do's clogging your brain into a sophisticated framework of files and action lists--all purportedly to free your mind to focus on whatever you're working on. However, it still operates from the decidedly Western notion that if we could just get really, really organized, we could turn ourselves into 24/7 productivity machines. (To wit, Allen, whom the New Economy bible Fast Company has dubbed "the personal productivity guru," suggests that instead of meditating on crouching tigers and hidden dragons while you wait for a plane, you should unsheathe that high-tech saber known as the cell phone and attack that list of calls you need to return.)

As whole-life-organizing systems go, Allen's is pretty good, even fun and therapeutic. It starts with the exhortation to take every unaccounted-for scrap of paper in your workstation that you can't junk, The next step is to write down every unaccounted-for gotta-do cramming your head onto its own scrap of paper. Finally, throw the whole stew into a giant "in-basket"

That's where the processing and prioritizing begin; in Allen's system, it get a little convoluted at times, rife as it is with fancy terms, subterms, and sub-subterms for even the simplest concepts. Thank goodness the spine of his system is captured on a straightforward, one-page flowchart that you can pin over your desk and repeatedly consult without having to refer back to the book. That alone is worth the purchase price. Also of value is Allen's ingenious Two-Minute Rule: if there's anything you absolutely must do that you can do right now in two minutes or less, then do it now, thus freeing up your time and mind tenfold over the long term. It's commonsense advice so obvious that most of us completely overlook it, much to our detriment; Allen excels at dispensing such wisdom in this useful, if somewhat belabored, self-improver aimed at everyone from CEOs to soccer moms (who we all know are more organized than most CEOs to start with). --Timothy Murphy